So is it just a coincidence that at the same time as Dreyfus Affair, Pissarro commenced painting his fifteen-canvas series of the Avenue de l’Opera in Paris? From the winter of 1897 to spring of 1898, Pissarro painted this series from the Grand Hotel du Louvre (Lloyd and Distel 142). In a letter to his son Lucien, Pissarro wrote of this location,
I have found a room in the Grand Hotel du Louvre which has a superb view over the Avenue de l’Opera and that corner of the Place du Palais-Royal. It’s going to be beautiful to paint. It is not very aesthetic perhaps, but I am delighted to be able to try to do these Paris streets which are often called ugly, but which are so silvery, so luminous and so lively and which are so different from the boulevards – it’s completely modern (qtd. Brettell 79).
This letter shows that Pissarro hoped to capture the “modernity” of Paris through his portrayals of her streets full of people. But perhaps he hoped to capture something else as well: Pissarro’s choice of the Avenue de l’Opera suggests his fascination with the dramatic flair of the Dreyfus affair playing out in Paris. The opera suited the operatic nature of the Affair, complete with its own set of protagonists and antagonists, a suffering hero, and political intrigue. This symbolic venue would help set the stage for his political messages about commotion in the streets in both his paintings and during the Dreyfus Affair.
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However, Pissarro did not clearly depict this commotion from the beginning of the Avenue de l’Opera series, just as Pissarro did not automatically join the Dreyfusards in the political fight. While Pissarro may have been among the first to react during the Dreyfus Affair, according to Philip Nord in Impressionist and Politics (Nord 102), Brettell writes that, “[Pissarro] appeared fairly non-committal in his first letter, reflecting in this tendency of most anarchists, who at the beginning of the case, were neither for nor against the affair. To them, it seemed merely confirm their belief that corruption was inherent in capitalistic society” (Brettell 80). In one of his first paintings in the series, Rue Saint-Honore Afternoon Rain Effect (1897), the social energy is subdued, similar to Pissarro’s first muted reaction to the Dreyfus Affair. Most of the carriages line the street, completely stationary, and only a few people brave the weather to walk around outside. The movement is much more contained and calm through the drizzling rain. These tentative views, both politically and pictorially through movement, showed his initial reluctance to get involved in the Dreyfus Affair.
Pictured:
Camille Pissarro, Rue Saint-Honore: Afternoon, Rain Effect (1897)